Peterborough City Council has proposed setting up new partnerships to improve services for young people in care.

The new service would aim to increase the number of foster carers in the city and secure more permanent long-term placements for young people, especially for those with more challenging care needs.

Wendi Ogle-Welbourn, the council's corporate director: people and communities, said: 'The overall ambition is to place a higher percentage of young people in care with our own local foster carers. We know our local carers well and therefore we can better match the needs of our children in care and help keep these children close to the city to maintain vital relationships with family and friends.

'This will also enable us to reduce expenditure on higher cost placements, helping the council to achieve savings and enabling investment in other services for children, young people and their families.

'By delivering a service as efficiently as possible, in partnership with a specialist organisation, it will allow us to protect prevention and early help services in the city such as youth work and early years’ services. It will also increase our current capacity in recruiting, training and supporting our own foster carers and adopters.'

The council expects to put the service out to competitive tender early in 2016.